


Alex's Extra Bright Light

by SmittyWerbenjagermanjensen



Category: Original Work
Genre: Family Drama, Growing Up, Making Friends, Multi, Past Drug Addiction, Poor, Skipping Grades, Teen Romance, Unhappy, advanced, gifted, middle class family, skipping 8th grade, smarrter than average, smart, some time skips, taking alex in, teen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 17:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11833152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmittyWerbenjagermanjensen/pseuds/SmittyWerbenjagermanjensen
Summary: Alex is a gifted 12 year old girl, when she is unhappy with her family situation she thinks her parents should get a divorce. unfortunately for her because of her mothers past drug abuse if her parents were to get a divorce her father would get sole custody of her, neither of her parents want that. She gets invited along with the rest of the girls in her class to a girl Casey's birthday party, she gets more than she bargained for when she becomes fast friends with Casey's older brother. Will becoming friends with him help her parents let her skip the eighth grade? Here is the story of Alex, a gifted girl trying to live in an ungifted world.





	Alex's Extra Bright Light

They yell, they scream, they fight. It was moments like these that little Alex wondered why she became. Why would they bring a child into this cold cruel world? Who in their right mind would even consider such an atrocity? But then there were moments away from the dark, where it felt as though she had the whole world in her hand. An example that might suffice could be the spring girl scouts trip in 3rd grade, her mother had come as a chaperone, that made Alex a little nervous, but in the end and middle and late beginning, all her fears were erased.  

_Her mother had led Alex’s group, group 3, into the north part of the woods, by a creek, a small shallow clear creek that made you want to jump and sit in it if it weren’t so cold out. The trip to the creek had been uneventful, but when they were sitting and admiring the aesthetic of the day, her mother had touched a plant. Not just any plant but the specific plant they warned not to touch before you even go near a tree. She had touched a poison ivy leaf. Alex most likely wouldn’t have noticed had she not been keeping track of how odd it was her mother has kept scratching her wrist. She didn’t say anything at first wanting to be sure that it wasn’t something her imagination had made up, she didn’t want to open a can of worms in front of these clean kept girls, they would hardly be able to understand, she herself had a bit of trouble comprehending it at first. Although after the two hundredth scratch her mother had pulled up her sleeve and looked down at the red, risen area her eyes went wide and looked at Alex, Alex had been looking at her sleeve and confirmed her suspicion of it being poison ivy._

_“You got poison ivy mom," she said in a hushed tone, even at the age of 8, she knew it wasn't good to let everyone know you had something like this wrong, it was against the rules, they specifically said not to get it. But in the midst of internal panic, Sarah H had interrupted. The words that left her mouth rang in Alex’s ears like silver bells. “Um, I think I have poison ivy, this is all red and itchy.” Sarah had gotten it too, Sarah was so mean she took everyone’s pencils, and cut in line, and always said she was saving a seat for someone at lunch when she didn’t want you to sit by her, but now she had poison ivy. You can’t stay if you have poison ivy. To say Alex was happy was an understatement, she was ecstatic. Sarah was in the bunk bed above Alex, when Alex had called dibs, Sarah had said, no, she already called dibs then said if she didn't hear her that was her own fault. They had to go back to the cabin and Sarah was picked up an hour later, Alex's mother had to go home too, fore poison ivy was super contagious. She had got to sleep in the top bunk like she wanted, nobody else had gotten it luckily, and the weekend had been one of the most memorable and fun that she could remember of the third grade._

Memories like that seemed to fade a little more whenever she thought about them at times like this. Almost like they were dreams instead of memories. She sat in her room on the king-sized bed that had been passed down from her parents. The walls were so thin and the problems so tiny, voices so loud. Honestly, she had forgotten what had even started this fight, her mother _Charlette_ had been really irritated and in a bad mood all day, and when her father _Alexander_ had gotten home, it had been an implosion of anger. In all her 12 years of life, she never wanted so badly to tell them to just end the relationship, she knew, she had known for a while, that they were only together still because of her. It hurt to know that her pure existence caused all this pain. It was almost a guilt, but she couldn't fool herself into feeling guilty for being born. 

“Yeah, well I’m sick of coming home to this mess!” “Why don’t you try cleaning it then!” “I’m the one that goes to work every day, to make _spending money_ for **_you_**!’’ “You go to work to make _living money_ for your _**family**_!" "Oh yeah, because groceries cost hundreds of dollars a week." "What are you saying?” “Oh, _you know_ what I’m saying.” “I can’t believe you would actually insinuate that, you know what, I’m leaving.” “Where are you going!” “Out!”

Then the front door slammed shut and a punch against the wall, Alex hated when he would bring it up then she would leave. It was like they didn’t even try anymore, she understood that sharing your whole life with a person must be hard especially when there’s a third person whose life is completely in your hands, but it was getting out of control, she almost wished they would fake happiness just around her or when she was in the house. She got off the bed and went over to her rickety wood desk, it had been in her room for as long as she could remember, probably since she had been born, it may have been just as unstable as her parent’s relationship but it did her well. She had found a compartment inside of it where even if they came in her room snooping for her diary they wouldn’t be able to find it, just to be sure she even made a fake diary where she wrote fake entries every day, it wasn’t so much that she was worried they would find her diary and get mad at her for what she had written in it but it was more as she didn’t want them knowing how she really felt about them and then completely changing their view of her as a person.

As far as they both knew she was smart and happy and looked up to both of them. When in reality it was almost the opposite. She was smart, very smart, one might even say she had an extremely bright light, she was eligible for skipping a grade but they didn’t want her too. They worried she would feel too young and immature around the older kids and get mixed up in some dangerous things to show everyone she was mature, just like her parents had done. She wasn’t the happiest child, and if they knew that, they most definitely would never let her skip any grades, how could she be happy with an entirely different crowd of people older than her when she wasn't even happy around people she had years of experience with? And she most certainly did not look up to them, although she did learn what not to do from them, learned how they had wasted whatever better than average future they had ahead of them. She would take their mistakes and figure out why they did them, and figure out a way to not make them herself.

She took her diary out from the wooden compartment and sat in the chair at her desk. She would usually choose to write in a different pen a color depending on what kind of day it was. Black ink meant a bad day, blue meant a sad day, red meant an eventful day or holiday, orange meant a happy day with no fighting or anything exciting, yellow meant a good day, a happy day where she forgot there were even problems that made her hate them being together. She hadn’t written with a yellow pen as often as she did six months ago, she looked back and saw the last time there was a yellow entry was two weeks ago.

Today she wrote with a black pen. She wrote, she wrote until the side of her middle finger had an indent. She wrote about them fighting. She wrote about him bringing up the addiction again. She wrote about how she wished they would just get a divorce. And then after writing that, she realized that’s what she wanted. She never thought that’s what she actually wanted, she always thought it was a passing emotion of sadness, but no. she thought about it a little more. If they weren’t together she could imagine both of them being happy, then maybe actually getting along. God if a twelve year old girl could see it why couldn't they, it was so easy. It was so, were they blind, deaf and dumb? Why had they been staying together for her, it was doing more harm than good to all of them. She should talk to them about it. When she didn't know but if she had to write tomorrows entry in black ink also she would be doing without thinking about it. It was time, she loved them, no matter how hateful and angry they were, and how many stupid mistakes they had made, and if they were happy maybe she could write all her entries in red, orange and yellow.

_Dear Diary,_

_They are fighting and I hate it, I hate it so much it makes me feel terrible. When will they be able to see that they aren’t each other’s enemy. Their stupid, stupid people. They see nothing but themselves it seems like. Why can’t they do it all hushed like they are supposed to, why can’t he keep his stupid mouth shut instead of bringing up that stupid addiction, she hates it, he knows she does, it’s such a low blow. She left to go to Harry’s again I suspect. She always leaves when he brings it up, she doesn’t stay to talk about it, they don’t even talk about it when their talking, it’s like they don’t speak the same language. Maybe they do speak the same language, nothings good enough and complain, look at that they must be bilingual. I wish they would just end it, it's not helping me it's not helping them. I just want them to get a divorce. I - I am going to tell them that they should consider getting a divorce._

She then put the diary back away into its compartment, put the pen back in its drawer with all of the other brightly colored pens. She walked across the gray carpet with a heavy heart and some hope, some hope that she may have just found the solution to her problem. It was funny, in movies, the parents always tell the children that the divorce isn't their fault, technically in this context the divorce would be because of her, therefore her _fault,_ and she was okay with that.

When she got cuddled in a cocoon of blankets and sat in the pitch black of her room, savoring the silence, she wasn’t worried about her mother. To worry about her mother would be like worrying about your dog when it got out of the house but went directly over to the neighbor’s yard. Harry was a man at the local grocery store he owned it and would sometimes let Alex help restock the fruit, I say let but she honestly didn’t like doing it, her mother thought it would be a good idea to get in harries good graces in case they had to take a tab out in the winter when the electric and heating bill would go up and they would have less money for food. They had gotten quite close to him, he was about fifteen twenty years older than her mother. Alex thought that her mother would like to think of him as almost the father figure she never had, hers had left at a young age to fight in the war and went MIA. Sadly enough Harry had a wife but was never able to have children so his wife left him for another man, the only reason she knew that was because her mother had a way of making people tell her things especially strangers, so of course Harry had told her all about his life.

Right now she was probably telling him all about the fight but leaving out the reason she had left the house, she didn’t open up about that time of her life, in her own words it was, “a time that shouldn’t be shared with anyone that wasn’t affected by it, it’s my business and if I want to keep it private, I will.”

Not even Alex knew much about it, she was so young when it was happening, she doesn’t think of it as her fault either, even though her mother might have, she remembered her mother explaining it to her grandmother that _it’s so hard, so much harder than I ever thought, I’m sorry, Alex just takes so much time and stress and it helps me, it feels so good._ She only caught on to the memory when she was older, when she asked her mother about it, she had explained that _when you were younger I would do something, something that I wasn’t supposed to do, that nobody should do, I did it anyway. It wasn’t because of you, so don’t think that. I did it because I was addicted, do you know what that means? No, it's okay you don't have to, I don't do it anymore, so don’t worry, but promise me you will never do **drugs** , okay, just remember that, listen when people tell you to just say no, okay? I know you're probably too young to understand but remember, say **just say no to** **drugs** , okay? **Okay**._

Seven probably had been too young to remember, but the way her mother was talking made her remember, like it was stuck in her brain, and she listened, she would never do any drugs. She knew a couple kids whose older siblings smoked pot, but if they did anything harder she doubted they would tell everyone about it like they had the pot. And pot, could you really count it as a drug if you didn't use it as a door way to other harder drugs and it was becoming legalized for recreational use and medical use. You don't see meth being used medicinally.

 


End file.
